What are we thankful for this year? David Porterfield cooking us breakfast. Not having to wake up at 1 a.m to work tomorrow. Google maps to help us translate Donna Vore’s directions. Bulls-Jazz on TNT tonight. Friends & family. And you reading this blog.
Enjoy your tryptophan coma.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: family, friends
Wedding season concluded for us this past weekend in Asheville, North Carolina. Sarah Davis (now Edge) tied the knot and then, validating her impeccable taste, chose Vancouver for her honeymoon.
The stay in Asheville was all too short. (And a bit waterlogged.) We’ll be going back soon.
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Helloooooo, ladies. [L to R] Bronwen, Meghan, Gail, Erin, Emily, Christy.
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The ladies after a delicious rehearsal dinner at 12 Bones. You ain’t had Baby Back Ribs until you’ve had 12 Bones.
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Cheerwine. Southern Crack.
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The Voglers, Beers and Mrs. Schwerdtmann. Jon G. Beers is looking, desperately, for a grandchild to hold.
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A cross section of Voreblog “Golden Readers.” God bless them.
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Andrew Cashmere, Ben and Mike Cicak debate who’s the brain, who’s the looks and who’s the wild card.
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The rare and exotic Cake Trees, native to the west Carolinas.
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Erin and Jon G. during the father-daughter dance. The boots, the boots, the boots are on fire!
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Jon G., hoping that a well-executed dance floor spin might magically induce pregnancy.
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Susie Beers to Ben: “Have you seen ‘Raising Arizona’? Jon’s ready to pull a Hi.”
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Katie 2, addicted to crack.
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Katie 2 and Katie 1 vie for Katie supremacy.
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The Daniels. They competed in two triathlons earlier that day. In those clothes.
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The band, shortly before Michael J. Fox came on for a killer guitar solo.
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The lucky couple.
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Sweeneyblog on the dance floor. Note the women and children are hiding.
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Some guy dancing with Susie, shortly before Jon G. took him out back.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: family, friends, photo gallery
These books are my friends!
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I like people. But I like books even more. And the books I like most? Awesome books by awesome authors.
Today’s Special Ellen Recommends Edition of Friday Recommends is devoted to one such awesome series of books: The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. They are brilliant. I am currently reading the 7th in the series. This means that I have read six books in the last two weeks (plus one by Stieg Larsson). And I have a job. Here is just a taste of the scrumptious dialogue from my current book: “We’ve exchanged blood several times, Sookie and I,” Eric said. “In fact, we’ve been lovers.” HAWT.
In conclusion: Charlaine Harris. Get it.
This will probably be the last time I am allowed to be a guest blogger, as I suspect that my post has dropped the intellectual nature of this blog down a peg or two. So, I bid you adieu.
Categories: Friday Recommends · books
Tagged: family
If you can Wii, you can definitely join the Readers Forum.
We alluded to Donna Vore, Ben’s mom, in yesterday’s “Voreplay” post. And we poked a little fun at her for calling it “the YouTube” instead of just “YouTube.” But the truth is, we could get away with it because Donna does not read Voreblog. It’s not because she isn’t a wonderful, supportive mother who devoutly cares about her son and daughter-in-law — it’s that the day-to-day commitment of checking a blog eludes her. In her defense, it does take the Vore’s home computer about ten minutes to boot AOL. (AOL! we hear many of you young whipper-snappers hooting. Yes, tis true.)
Just because Donna isn’t a regular Voreblog reader doesn’t mean that there aren’t others of you out there in the “parent” demographic who make it a point to check in now and then. We ran into one of you (John Tolos) last week. You said, “I’ve tried reading your blog a couple times but it’s a little past me. I’ll tell you which one I liked though: that one about the grandchildren.”
Not to stereotype, but our oldest demographic seems to share John’s view. They like posts about grandchildren. They like posts about our parents wanting grandchildren. They seem less enthralled with anything having to do with pop culture in general and Nic Cage in particular. So what’s on the minds of our senior demographic?
Pardon us before we go any farther, but instead of “oldest,” “parent” or “senior” demographic, can we just call you, say, our Golden Readers? Is that offensive? Better than Old Farts? We know this is a sensitive subject. Some families howl and cackle about age (even death) while others tiptoe around it like it’s a slumbering bear. We know. We descended from one of each.
So “Golden Readers” is okay? We mean it when we say that we don’t think of you as old. If you’re our parents age, you’re not old. You’re just our parents or our friends’ parents. Some of you officially qualify as senior citizens now, but you’re not senior citizens to us. You see the dilemma here? What we don’t want is for you to think we’re joking around behind your back, jabbing our thumbs in your direction and whispering, “Hey, who invited the fogies?” Trust us, we’re not doing that. Really.
As a way of officially recognizing you Golden Readers and inviting you into the conversation, we’d like to dedicate our Tenth Readers Forum to you. This naturally lead us to ask, What would an Old Tim–we mean, a “Golden Reader” — want to discuss in a Readers Forum? We generally like to do Top 5 lists. Top 5 favorite grandchildren? Top 5 Harrison Ford movies? Top 5 favorite colonoscopies? (Sorry, below the belt.) We decided maybe Top 5 lists are a generational thing. So we racked our brains a little while longer until we finally came up with this:
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
It could be about life. Marriage. Work. Faith. Colonoscopies. Anything. It just has to be good advice that someone gave to you.
As always, anyone is free to comment and share his or her wisdom, which resides in young and old alike. But here are a few disclaimers we make specifically to you, Golden Readers, for your peace of mind:
So, Golden Readers, lead the way! You have a captive audience. We sit at your feet awaiting your pearls of wisdom.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: family, Readers Forum
This was originally going to be our Best of Movies 2008 post, but we realized a few things between Wednesday and today:
Eleven films, or just under one a month, may seem like a lot to you. But for us, it’s a significant downgrade. During those carefree newlywed days in Nashville, we’d see a movie at the theaters almost every week; if we didn’t like it, we’d go watch another one (a k a, “pull a double feature”) to cleanse the palate. This year was, in some regards, major progress for us, notably from a budget standpoint. But as movie critics, we took several steps backward.
After Matthew Leathers expressed disbelief that we’d attempt to post a Best of 08 movies list when most of the really good stuff (Revolutionary Road; The Wrestler; Wendy & Lucy; Frost/Nixon) hasn’t come out yet, while we have yet to see the rest of what’s supposed to be the really good stuff (Slumdog Millionaire; Synecdoche, New York; The Visitor; The Reader; even Wall-E), we realized we’d be doing a disservice to our readership if we offered any definitive word now on the best of film in 2008. Thus, expect our list sometime in the new year, perhaps shortly after Matthew posts his so we can just crib from that.
Until then, some facts and figures on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which we saw today with both of our families:
LENGTH OF MOVIE: 159 minutes (a k a, “looooong”)
LENGTH OF SHORT STORY THE MOVIE IS BASED ON: 24 pages.
APPROPRIATENESS FOR VIEWING WITH IN-LAWS: Very appropriate. (Certainly more appropriate than Meet the Fockers.) Only one swear word (said emphatically by a seven-year-old); very tasteful, non-explicit love scenes.
PERCENTAGE OF MOVIE NARRATED BY SUSIE BEERS FOR THE SAKE OF JON BEERS: Somewhere around 40%.
NUMBER OF SCENES IN WHICH A MAN IS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING: Seven.
FIRST MOVIE DAVID FINCHER AND BRAD PITT WORKED ON TOGETHER: Seven.
PITT CHARACTER FROM A FINCHER MOVIE WHO WOULD CRUSH BOTH DET. DAVID MILLS AND BENJAMIN BUTTON: Tyler Durden in a TKO.
VERDICT FROM THE WOMAN SITTING IN FRONT OF US: “That movie was endless.”
VERDICT FROM DAN VORE: “I felt like I just went fifteen rounds.”
VERDICT FROM ERIN VORE: “That old man was hot as donkey.”
VERDICT FROM BEN VORE: “Tilda Swinton is nutburgers hot.”
VERDICT FROM DONNA VORE: “That wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting.”
AGREED-UPON AMOUNT OF MOVIE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN CUT OUT WITHOUT ANY ADVERSE EFFECT: Answers vary. Anywhere between 15 minutes (Erin) and 94 minutes (Dan).
HOURS YOU WILL SPEND AFTER THE FILM WISHING YOU WERE A BALLET DANCER: Approximately 3.5.
HOURS YOU WILL SPEND AFTER THE FILM INSPECTING YOUR WRINKLES AND PONDERING MORTALITY: Approximately 3.5.
NUMBER OF TIMES YOU WILL THINK, “THIS IS AWFULLY SIMILAR TO FORREST GUMP”: Anywhere between three and eleven.
An early favorite for Best Movie of 2009? We’ve waited three years for this.
Categories: movies
Tagged: Arrested Development, Best of 08, family
Part one was a recap of some of our favorite vacation pics. Now it’s time to catch up on some wedding shots. Lights, please.
Cincinnati. August 2004. The Beers driveway. Erin and sisters.
Jon G., moments before escorting Erin down the aisle: “I want grandkids and I want them now.”
“It’s been eight seconds. I don’t see any grandkids.”
Ben thanks his lucky stars he beat his receding hairline to his wedding day. The morning after, virtually all of his hair fell out.
Erin & Ben discover that Dan Vore has left a shaving cream butt imprint on their car. (Jon G. is checking to see if Erin is pregnant yet.)
“So I’ve been thinking we should start a blog in four years.”
Erin & Ben scope out the crowd at the Art Museum. “Ten bucks says you can’t hit table three with a loogie.”
Our friends and family. Look very closely and you’ll see a gob of spit on table three.
Regrettably, we do not have digital photos from many of our friends’ weddings. Thus, any exclusion should not be taken as a slight or any indication that you failed some kind of friendship test. (Though some of you have. You know who you are.*) From the weddings we did photograph, here are a few highlights.
Jesse and Elaine Savage (background) toast the married life. October 2006. San Francisco, CA.
Ben toasts Jesse. He refrains from using any analogies about men in a boat.
The Vore clan at Joseph & Mary Tufts’s wedding. Columbus, OH. May 2007. (We do not know who the strange bearded man is in the back.)
Later the strange bearded man put on a “Mr. Happy” t-shirt and caused a ruckus in the conga line.
Do not let this man near the dance floor at your wedding. He will burn it up.
Jenny Porterfield at her wedding in Columbus, OH. June 2007. David, not pictured, makes a mean grilled salmon.
From Joe & Sarah Giordano’s wedding at Ault Park, June 2007. Mike & Gail Cicak and Erin enjoy a tasty June Sparkler.
They also served Coneys at the reception. (Best. Idea. Ever.)
Lauren & Patrick Brown’s wedding. Hudson, OH. September 2007.
Patrick and Mr. Brown Dr. Steidl, also a beekeeper.
The Beers women at Ellen & Eric’s wedding. Peterloon, Cincinnati. October 2007.
Jon G. Beers, calculating how much this wedding is costing him per minute.
Jon G. prepares to give the toast.
“Having kids isn’t rocket science. So let’s get crackin’, gals.”
“Seriously, who stole my grandkids?”
“Suz, shut it down. No one’s having any more fun ’til I get me a kid.”
Eric & Ellen make a run on the cake in case Jon isn’t joking.
Rob Smart, taking a brief rest from his full-time calling as a dancing machine.
Steve & Donna Vore mask their grandchild-less rage for a split second. Donna later cut the power under direct orders from Jon G.
From Tom & Kathleen Freyvogel’s wedding. Pittsburgh, PA, January 2008. The post-rehearsal dinner fireworks spelled KATHLEEN (HEARTS) TOM.
This is a good-lookin’ bunch of men.
They married a better-lookin’ bunch of women.
More good-lookin’ ladies, smothering Tom & Kathleen with affection.
Final installment of the Voreblog Photo Album coming sometime in the indefinite future and showcasing: numerous unflattering pictures of Scooter Thomas, scandalous shots of celebrities from our days in the paparazzi, pictures of Ben flexing in front of the mirror, and incriminating shots of Erin picking her boogs when she thought no one was looking.
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* = Fred and Lucinda.**
** = Fred and Lucinda are not real. If they were, we’d make every effort to find something likable about them, grueling as that task may be.
Categories: marriage
Tagged: babies, family, friends, photo gallery
Today’s Saturday Recommends is written by Jon G. Beers.
Heyyyyyyyyyyy!
You know what’d be really great today? Besides making honey?*
It’d be having grandchildren.
On the first snowy day of the year, I can’t think of anything better than sitting down in the living room with a fire in the stove and a little baby on my lap.
Sure would be nice if at least one of my daughters got on that real soon. Susie’d like it too!
No pressure or anything!
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* = I am a beekeeper. You are all getting honey for Christmas.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: babies, family
Before I (Ben) worked in retail, I was a youth minister for four years at a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. Moving from one to the other as I did, I was struck by the similarities between ministry and retail. Both are, in part, about service and meeting people’s needs. Both, in another sense, are about marketing; the examples are obvious in retail, but a church must also craft and present a message to its audience in the hopes of making a transaction. The language is different (the phrase “seeker sensitive” may be the closest hybrid of ministry and retail, with its nuanced understanding of both a message to pitch and a specific demographic to target) but the means are similar. You have needs: we can meet them. This is not to say that ministry is one big sales pitch with a gloss of holy-sounding spin. It is to say that a church which fails to care for and fill the needs of its members will fail just like any business would.
What five years in retail have taught me is that Christians need work on the spiritual practice of shopping. Ask anyone who works in retail or the restaurant business when his or her least favorite day of the week is, and many will say Sunday when church lets out. Are these highly visible shoppers — billboards for all of Christendom in their Sunday best — symptomatic of all Christians? Yes and no. Yes because Christians believe we all in some small, imperfect way are representatives of Christ, and to take that lightly would be to miss the point. And no because you can’t blame everyone for a few bad apples. But I’ve had enough firsthand experiences to know it’s not just a few bad apples.
I’ll give a non-retail example first. My dad is a pediatrician and my mom a nurse, and they work together in the same family practice. My mom also works as a receptionist a few days of the week, so she’s on the front lines answering the phones. When she answers she gives her name, Donna, but not the last name. Once a member of our home church, who sits on a committee with both my parents and cheerfully greets them every Sunday, called to complain about missing an appointment for her child. My mom recognized who the caller was but did not identify herself. The caller said it was not her fault she had been unable to keep a previous appointment and that she should not have been inconvenienced to reschedule and furthermore that she knows Dr. Vore and that he would not be pleased with how my mom was obstructing her access to him, and could she speak to someone higher up who wasn’t a lowly receptionist? This begs the question: What disconnect happened in this woman’s life that someone she worships with on Sunday is the same person she can belittle and bully on Monday?
Now, we are all hypocrites. No one can escape the gap between actions and words. We all have a bad day, or an outburst we regret, or comments we wish we could take back. And Christianity is insistent on the matter of forgiveness.
It’s also, to come back to retail, about serving one another. Yet we have a culture that encourages us to think of people who serve us as disposable. They are here to meet our needs, to give us what we want. If what we want is unreasonable, there is the unspoken assumption that superior customer service will go out of its way to meet the unreasonable.
There is a legendary customer service parable, possibly apocryphal, about a man who returned a tire to Nordstrom’s. As the story goes, Nordstrom accepted the return despite the fact they don’t sell tires. The moral: Win the customer by going above and beyond what’s normal for what’s exceptional. That is undoubtedly good advice for world class customer service. But it also reinforces “The customer is always right” when it’s more accurate to say, “The customer is sometimes lying, pushy, condescending and simply wrong, but he’s still a customer.”* Where is the line between accommodating a customer and getting walked over? How do you provide great customer service yet not enable abusive customer behavior? And how do you meet exceptional needs and hold a standard that is still fair but (one hopes) profitable?
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But back to Christians and shopping. Since you never hear a sermon about how to shop, let me offer a few, humble suggestions for Christians to consider when they’re pushing around a shopping cart. (Of course, we think these suggestions are good advice for everyone, regardless of spiritual beliefs. But the point is that Christians talk about being a light on a hill and spreading good news to all the world, which is what we’re called to do, yet some seem to conveniently forget that this applies as much at your local shop as it does in, say, Africa. And if we really care what people think about the church — which we should — then one segment of people who definitely need to be won over are those of us in retail.)
Enough throat-clearing.
1. The people working in retail are people. Some are Christians too. Whether they are or not doesn’t matter. Treat them with respect. (When Jesus said “Love thy neighbor” he meant everyone, and just to be clear he said your enemies are your neighbors too.) Don’t condescend to them. Say “thank you” and make eye contact and ask them how their day is going. Forgive them when they mess up. Please please please put down your cell phone when you’re checking out.
2. Complain productively and respectfully. When customer service is poor and you feel compelled to complain (which you should), do it the right way. It is invaluable to hear how we can improve what we’re doing wrong, but the way you complain makes all the difference in how it’s received. There’s no need to make a scene. When you speak to a manager, tell them exactly what you need from them to address the situation. They’re not a human punching bag either. And if they don’t respond appropriately, figure out where you can take your complaint up the chain.
3. You can regulate too. My sister-in-law Bevin was in line when a customer checking out began dressing down the cashier. So Bevin said, “You know, acting like a jerk isn’t going to help solve the problem here.” And the other customers in line chimed in by nodding their heads up and down! Chastened, the customer stormed off in a huff. Besides illustrating the point Bevin is awesome, it’s a reminder that you’re never just a spectator.
4. Reward good customer service. Put your money where your mouth is and shop where you’re valued. Your money is your vote. At Coffee Please in Madeira on Friday mornings where Ben’s small group meets for breakfast, Lisa knows us by name and takes the food out to our tables (which she’ll push together for us). The same way that a church needs to be rooted somewhere to have real value in the community, support businesses that do the same. Places still matter. Support stores that make your town different than ours.
5. Be a good tipper. Look at where retail employees park and look at the cars they drive. They’re not driving Beamers. Sometimes they’re not even driving cars that should be on the road. If you can afford going out to a nice restaurant or a cup of joe every day, you can afford to be a generous tipper. If someone in retail is frugal enough to stash those tips away, it’s eventually going to pay for the unexpected but essential emergency like, say, new tires. (Poor customer service does not let you off the hook. There are ways to address this [see #2 above]. But when the cooks make a mistake, don’t take it out on your server.)
Enough preaching. Fellow retailers, I’m sure, can offer many additional suggestions which I’ve overlooked or neglected. I hope they do.
*=This truth needs to be told too: Nine out of ten customers are perfectly fine, and some are wonderful, at least in my line of retail. The lying, pushy, condescending and simply wrong ones are few and far between, but they tend to be slightly more memorable.
(Special thanks to Jenny, Scott, Seth, Bevin and Erin for all their suggestions and feedback on this post.)
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: faith, family, retail
For this edition of This Day in Vore History, we reach all the way back to 1992, when young Ben was fifteen years old.
Baseball was my first love. One of my first memories of my dad was him teaching me how to read box scores. I remember the columns of numbers and abbreviations slowly arranging themselves into a pattern I could decipher. As I studied them I had the sensation of learning vital things, things I knew would matter in my life.
Great forces of evil conspired to keep me from starting Little League the year my friends did. My birthday fell after the July 31 cut-off. This was still in the era when baseball careers began at age eight, not five or six with t-ball. On the first day of official sign-ups, while my friends boasted of the great careers waiting for them, I went home, slammed my bedroom door, and wailed through supper. (The injustice of it, my tears said.)
Once a summer, usually the middle weekend in August, my family went to Pittsburgh for a weekend doubleheader: A Saturday night Pirates game and Sunday matinee. We stayed at the Sheraton Station Square and took the Gateway Clipper to the games. The Pirates were terrible in the 80s. I was too young for the “We Are Family” championship teams of the 70s, with Willie Stargell and Bill Madlock and Dave Parker smoking in the dugout. I inherited the Pirates of Joe Orsulak, Benny Distefano and the atrocious Jose DeLeon (2-19 in 1985). Still, those weekends were the highlights of my summer. I just learned not to base my happiness on the Pirates winning.
The pieces for a good team were there in the late 80s, but it wasn’t until 1990 that the Pirates won the division. You may remember the Killer Bs — Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla — as well as All-Stars Andy Van Slyke and Doug Drabek. But it was the role players — Jay Bell, Sid Bream, Steve Buechele, John Smiley, Mike LaValliere, Bob Walk, Orlando Merced, Jeff King — who made them such a solid team. Pittsburgh lost to the Reds in the 1990 NLCS, then Atlanta in 1991. By then everyone knew the window was closing. Bonilla signed with the Mets. Bonds was sure to leave soon. Atlanta looked to be good for a while. We had missed our chance.
Except Pittsburgh had a great year in 1992. Barry Bonds won his second MVP. Tim Wakefield came out of nowhere to finish 8-1 in 13 starts. They finished 96-66. And Atlanta was waiting for them again in the NLCS.
My first and only playoff baseball game was Game 3 at Three Rivers Stadium. Pittsburgh was down 2-0 in the series and turncoat Sid Bream hit a solo home run in the 4th inning to put the Braves up 1-0. The Pirates were still scoreless until Don Slaught stepped to the plate in the bottom of the fifth and belted a home run that landed six rows in front of me in the left field bleachers. We taped the game at home, and you could see me, my brother, my dad and uncle in the very top row of the screen when the ball landed. I was high-fiving the daylights out of everyone in the section.
Pittsburgh won that game 3-2, lost Game Four, then won Game Five to send the series back to Atlanta. They jumped all over the Braves in Game Six, scoring eight runs in the second inning. Wakefield won (again) and the series went, as it had a year before, to a decisive Game Seven.
After losing Games One and Four, Drabek pitched masterfully. He held the Braves scoreless through eight innings, while the Pirates managed two runs off the evil John Smoltz. My dad stayed up to watch the game with me that night, even though he traditionally goes to bed around eight thirty. We had a running joke in my family every Monday when my dad would say, “Sure am looking forward to that Monday Night Football game tonight!”, to which my mom would sarcastically reply, “Right.” She knew — everyone knew — my dad would be lights out and snoring on the couch by nine fifteen. This never stopped the ritual though.
After the seventh inning, I got the idea to tear up six little pieces of notebook paper and write “Five outs,” “Four outs,” etc., down to “No outs!!!” (I distinctly remember putting three exclamation points.) As Drabek worked the eighth, I handed my dad each scrap of paper. I’m not sure what he made of the ritual, other than that his son was giddy and acting a little stupid at the thought of his beloved Pirates finally going to the Series.
Drabek started the bottom of the ninth and gave up a lead-off double to Terry Pendleton. Then Jose Lind — Gold Glover Jose Lind! — booted a David Justice grounder. Sid Bream walked after that. Jim Leyland pulled Drabek and put in State College High School grad Stan Belinda. I remember being very queasy at that point. The final three scraps of paper in my hand were getting a little damp with palm sweat. And my father was unleashing some of his more potent curse words; “dang nabbit!” and “criminy!” were just rolling off his tongue.
Belinda got Ron Gant to fly out, scoring Pendleton. Damon Berryhill walked on several verrrrry questionable ball calls. (Home plate umpire John McSherry left in the third inning with chest pains. Left field ump Randy Marsh and his microscopic strike zone called the rest of the game.) Belinda got Brian Hunter, who I really just hated for no good reason, to pop up for the second out. I remember shouting when it happened. Yes! This was really going to happen!
The Braves sent Francisco Cabrera to the plate. Cabrera was the last position player on the Atlanta bench. He was literally their last straw. He had played in only twelve games during the regular season and went to the plate just ten times. You could not have asked for a better match-up. I pictured every Braves fan seeing Cabrera walk out of the dugout and wanting to Tomahawk Chop themselves to death. Francisco Cabrera? That’s who our season is riding on?
Baseball fans know the rest. Cabrera singled to left field. Sid Bream, former Pirate, slowest man in the universe, rounded third and beat the throw from Bonds by inches. Skip Caray had a coronary. The Braves went to the Series. The Pirates have never had a winning season since. (As Bill Simmons put it, “The franchise was effectively murdered by one play.” And my innocence, Bill. And my innocence.)
What still gets me is the suddenness of it. We were up 2-0 going into the ninth. Even when Cabrera stepped to the plate, the Pirates were still ahead 2-1. One minute I had that final “No Outs!!!” in my hand, the next my dad and I were speechless as Atlanta players rushed the field and crushed Sid Bream under a human pyramid while a dejected Andy Van Slyke just sat there in center field, unable to comprehend it.
I couldn’t either. I had never felt as miserable as I did at that moment. Growing up, I thought, is not getting any easier. To commemorate this bitter, hard-earned wisdom, I removed the VHS tape from our VCR player, took it outside, and smashed it with a hammer.
Categories: This Day in Vore History · sports · things that make you sad
Tagged: adolescence, family, Pittsburgh Pirates
